Lafayette's position as commander of the National Guard of Paris was
one of great importance. "He rendered the Revolution possible by giving
it an army," says a writer of his own nation, who does not hesitate
to criticize him, but who also assures us that from July, 1789, to
July, 1790, he was perhaps the most popular man in France. Being a
born optimist, he was sure that right would soon prevail. If he had
too great belief in his own leadership it is not surprising, since
every previous undertaking of his life had succeeded; and he certainly
had more experience in revolution than any of his countrymen--an
experience gained in America under the direct influence of Washington.
He had gone to America a boy afire with enthusiasm for liberty. He
returned to France a man, popular and successful, with his belief in
himself and his principles greatly strengthened. He was impulsive and
generous, he had a good mind, but he was not a deep thinker, and from
the very nature of his mind it was impossible for him to foresee the
full difficulty of applying in France the principles that had been
[Pg 201]so successful in America. In France politics were much more
complicated than in a new country where there were fewer abuses to
correct. France was old and abuses had been multiplying for a thousand
years. To borrow the surgeon's phrase, the wound made by revolution
in America was a clean wound that healed quickly, "by the first
intention." In France the wound was far more serious and horribly
infected. It healed in time, but only after a desperate illness.
It is interesting that three of Lafayette's most influential American
friends, Washington, Jefferson, and Gouverneur Morris, had misgivings
from the first about the situation in France, fearing that a revolution
could not take place there without grave disorders and that Lafayette
could not personally ride such a storm. Morris, who was then in Paris,
urged caution upon him and advised him to keep the power in the hands
of the nobility. When Lafayette asked him to read and criticize his
draft of The Declaration of Rights before it was presented to the
Assembly, Morris suggested several changes to make it more moderate;
"for," said this American, "revolutions are not won by sonorous
phrases."
Although keen for reform and liking to dress it in sonorous phrases,
Lafayette had no wish to be rid of the king. He did not expect to have
a president in France or the exact kind of government that had been
adopted in the United States. "Lafayette was neither republican nor
royalist, but always held that view half-way between the two which
theorists call a constitutional monarchy," says a French writer. "In
[Pg 202]all his speeches from 1787 to 1792 he rarely used the word
'liberty' without coupling it with some word expressing law and order."
Events proved that he was too thoroughly a believer in order to please
either side. One party accused him of favoring the aristocrats, the
other of sacrificing everything for the applause of the mob. What he
tried to do was to stand firm in the rush of events, which was at first
so exhilarating and later changed to such an appalling sweep of the
furies. If he had been less scrupulous and more selfish he might have
played a greater role in the Revolution--have risen to grander heights
or failed more abjectly--but for a time he would have really guided
the stormy course of events. As it was, events overtook him, carried
him with them, then tossed him aside and passed him by. Yet even so
he managed for three years to dominate that tiger mob of Paris "more
by persuasion than by force." This proves that he was no weakling.
Jefferson called him "the Atlas of the Revolution."
There was opposition to him from the first. Mirabeau and Lafayette
could never work wholeheartedly together, which was a pity, for with
Mirabeau's eloquence to carry the National Assembly and Lafayette's
popularity with the National Guard they could have done much. The
cafés, those people's institutes of his young days, speedily developed
into political clubs of varying shades of opinion, most of which grew
more radical hourly. Marie Antoinette continued to be resentful and
bitter and did all in her power to thwart reform and to influence the
[Pg 203]king. In addition to parties openly for and against the new
order of things there were individuals, both in high and low places,
who strove to spread disorder by underhand means and to use it for
selfish ends. One was the powerful Duc d'Orléans, cousin of the king,
very rich and very unprincipled, whose secret desire was to supplant
Louis upon the throne. He used his fortune to spread discontent through
the Paris mob during the long cold winter, when half the inhabitants of
the town went hungry. His agents talked of famine, complained of delay
in making the Constitution, and gave large sums to the poor in ways
that fed their worst passions, while supplying their very real need for
bread.
Even after the lapse of one hundred and thirty years it is uncertain
just how much of a part he played in the stormy happenings of the early
days of October, 1789. On the night of the 2d of October the king and
queen visited the hall at Versailles where the Garde du Corps, the
royal bodyguard, was giving a banquet. The diners sprang to their feet
and drank toasts more fervent than discreet. In the course of the next
two days rumor spread to Paris that they had trampled upon the Tricolor
and substituted the white of the Bourbons. Out of the garrets and slums
of the city the mob boiled toward the Hôtel de Ville, crying that a
counter-revolution had been started and that the people were betrayed.
Lafayette talked and harangued. On the 5th he held the crowds in check
from nine o'clock in the morning until four, when he learned that a
[Pg 204]stream of malcontents, many of them women, had broken away and
started for Versailles, muttering threats and dragging cannon with them.
Lafayette had confessed to Gouverneur Morris only a few days before
that his National Guard was not as well disciplined as he could wish.
Whether this was the reason or because he felt it necessary to get
express permission from the Hôtel de Ville, there was delay before
he and his militia set out in pursuit. He had sworn to use the Guard
only to execute the will of the people. For what followed he has been
severely blamed, while other witnesses contend just as hotly that
he did all any commander could do. That night he saved the lives of
several of the Garde du Corps; posted his men in the places from
which the palace guard had been withdrawn by order of the king; made
each side swear to keep the peace; gave his personal word to Louis
that there would be no violence; saw that everything was quiet in the
streets near the palace where the mob still bivouacked; then, worn with
twenty hours' incessant labor, went to the house of a friend for a
little sleep.
That sleep was the cause of more criticism than any act of his
seventy-six years of life; for the mob, driven by an instinct for evil
which seems strongest in crowds at dawn, hurled itself against the
palace gates, killed the two men on guard before the queen's door, and
forced its way into her bedchamber, from which she fled, half dressed,
to take refuge with the king. Lafayette hurried back with all possible
haste; made his way to the royal couple; addressed the crowd in the
palace courtyard, telling them the king would show his trust by going
[Pg 205]back with them voluntarily to take up his residence in Paris;
and persuaded the queen to appear with him upon a balcony, where, in
view of all the people, he knelt and kissed her hand. After that he
led out one of the palace guard and presented him with a tricolored
cockade; and, touched by these tableaux, the mob howled delight. That
night, long after dark, the royal family entered the Tuileries, half
monarchs, half prisoners. But discontent had been only partly appeased,
and during the melancholy ride to the city Marie Antoinette gave the
mob its watchword. Seeing a man in the dress of the very poor riding on
the step of her coach she had remarked disdainfully that never before
had a sans-culotte--a man without knee-breeches--occupied so honorable
a position. The speech was overheard and taken up and shouted through
the crowd until "sans-culotte" became a symbol of the Revolution.
The events of that day proved that Lafayette had not the quality of a
great leader of men. How much of his ill success was due to bad luck,
how much to over-conscientiousness in fulfilling the letter of his
oath, how much to physical weariness, we may never know. The royal
family believed he had saved their lives, and the vilest accusations
against him, including the one that he really wished Louis to fall
a victim of the mob, appear to have been manufactured twenty-five
years later in the bitterness of another political struggle. It is
significant that very soon after the king came to Paris Lafayette held
a stormy interview with the Duc d'Orléans, who forthwith left France.
[Pg 206]Since that melancholy ride back to Paris the rulers of France
have never lived at Versailles. Within ten days the National Assembly
followed the king to town, and during the whole remaining period of
the Revolution the mob had the machinery of government in its keeping.
It invaded the legislative halls to listen to the making of the
Constitution, it howled approval of speeches or drowned them in hisses,
and called out from the windows reports to the crowds packing the
streets below.
Political clubs soon became the real censors of public opinion, taking
an ever larger place in the life of the people, until, alas! they began
to take part in the death of many of them. The most influential club
of all was the Jacobins, known by that name because of the disused
monastery where it held its meetings. It began as an exclusive club
of well-to-do gentlemen of all parties, who paid large dues and met
to discuss questions of interest. Then it completely changed its
character, took into its organization other clubs in Paris and other
cities, and by this means became a vast, nation-wide political machine
of such iron discipline that it was said a decree of the Jacobins
was better executed than any law passed by the National Assembly.
When its decrees grew more radical its membership changed by the
simple process of expelling conservative members, until Robespierre
became its controlling spirit. Another club more radical still was
the Cordelières, in which Marat and Danton, those stormy petrels of
the Terror, held sway. This smaller organization influenced even the
[Pg 207]Jacobins and through them every village in France. Several of
the most radical leaders published newspapers of vast influence, like
Marat's _Ami du Peuple_, which carried their opinions farther than the
spoken word could do, out into peaceful country lanes. In the cities
the great power of the theater was directed to the same violent ends.
In vain the more conservative patriots started clubs of their own; the
others had too great headway. The Feuillants, that Lafayette and Bailly
were instrumental in founding, was called contemptuously the club of
the monarchists. All these changes were gradual, but little by little,
as time passed, the aims of the revolutionists altered. What had been
at first a cry for justice became an appeal for liberty, then a demand
for equality, and finally a mad howl for revenge.
[Pg 208]XXIII